NCJ Number
216575
Journal
Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice Volume: 48 Issue: 6 Dated: October 2006 Pages: 905-939
Date Published
October 2006
Length
35 pages
Annotation
This study examined initial and subsequent news stories (1992 to 2002) that reported on and analyzed the Westray coal mine explosion on May 9, 1992, which killed 26 miners in Plymouth Nova Scotia, with attention to how the news media avoided any framing of the explosion as the result of corporate crime.
Abstract
In effect, the news coverage of legal proceedings associated with charges of criminal corporate actions that caused the miners' deaths was framed with a vocabulary that avoided customary references to charges of criminal activity. In so doing, the press reflected Canadian culture's trivialization of corporate actions that by the law's measure are criminal. As the processes of investigation, criminal trial, and official inquiry examined who was criminally responsible for the explosion and the deaths of the miners, the associated news reports failed to refer to the corporation and its management personnel as criminal defendants who were on trial for "killing" the miners; nor was there any suggestion that the deaths of the miners were "homicides." Instead, the terms news media used to classify the cause of the explosion and miners' deaths were "an abuse of authority," "mismanagement," and "incompetence." The news media persistently avoided the vocabulary customarily used in referring to crimes and criminal trials. This study examined 1,972 news stories on the Westray explosion. The analysis of the news coverage uses Michel Foucault's concept of the "politics of truth" and Stanley Cohen's ideas about cultural denial in order to understand the media's choice of language in describing what caused the deaths at the Westray coal mine. 3 tables and 81 references